2. What is a Target Audience?
A target audience is defined as:
• 'A particular group at which a product such as
a film or advertisement is aimed', in this case
a newspaper.
Examples would be:
• Local people in specific areas
• Business people
• Well-educated readers
• Working class residents
• Students
3. Newspaper Target Audiences
Newspapers tend to target a wide audience
of most age groups, sometimes specific
audiences depending on the language,
style and type of newspaper. For example,
The Times newspaper targets older, more
educated readers, in contrast to The Sun
who targets all age groups, but working
class residents.
4. My Target Audience
My target audience for this project is
aimed for people over the age of twenty in
the Wymondham area. This is mostly of
people who are entering the world of work
for the first time, and for older people who
would be starting new families.
5. The demographics of my
Target Audience: Gender and Age
• Gender: My newspaper product will appeal to any
gender because I will vary the content to draw
interest from both sides. The colour scheme of
red, black and white is considered masculine but it
is a common colour which does appeal to both
genders.
• Age: I have chosen people over the age of 20
because they would be entering the world of work
for the first time and starting families, also younger
people don’t tend to have as much interest in
newspapers. The content will relate to the local
area, in which the residents will have interest in.
6. The demographics, continued:
Ethnicity and Social Class
• Ethnicity: This doesn’t matter for my
newspaper, but it will be designed to
appeal to all people from the community
from any ethnic background.
• Social Class: my newspaper will appeal to
classes A, B, C1 and C2 because the
language and content will be suitable for
people in those classes.
7. The demographics, continued:
Education and Economic Status
• Educational background: the majority of my target
audience would have completed education, and
possibly higher education and would have gone on
into employment or voluntary work. The
newspaper language will be simple and should be
easily understandable.
• Economic Status: this depends, because some
people could be still in further education, therefore
classed as ‘student’, but others might be
‘employed’, with some ‘unemployed’. Because this
varies, the price of my newspaper will be
reasonably low so the majority of people can
afford it.
8. The demographics, continued:
Location and Accessibility
• Location and Accessibility: as this is a
local newspaper, it will be targeted at
residents of the local area as it will only be
relevant to them. However, it will be
accessible to some of the surrounding
areas as they like to be informed of what is
happening in that area.
9. How I will do this
I will focus on this target audience when
producing my newspaper to ensure I
create a product suitable for them to make
my newspaper better and more appealing.
10. What I have found out about my
Target Audience
From my questionnaire results, I have found
out that 93% of respondents were employed
and the majority were over the age of twenty.
This clarifies that the rest of the results are
suitable answers to represent my target
audience.
43% of respondents often read weekly
newspapers, and in second place was daily
newspapers. Therefore I should produce a
weekly newspaper, as this is what my target
audience normally aim for.
11. Continued...
Broadsheet newspapers were seen as more
popular than tabloid newspapers, therefore I
will consider the style when producing mine.
The most popular category for the price of
newspapers was 60p - £1, therefore I will aim
to put the price of my newspaper in that
section.
Current affairs was the highest score for which
topics my target audience liked reading, with
local perspectives and sport in second and
third place. I will consider relating the main
stories of my newspaper under these topics.
12. Continued...
There is an equal score between the people
who find adverts appealing, and the ones
who don’t. I will include adverts anyway, but I
will try to make them appealing so they
interest the audience.
Headlines were chosen as more eye-catching
to the public over stories and photographs so
I will consider this.
When I produce the masthead, I will try to keep
it similar to other newspaper mastheads, but I
will add my own style to it. Most respondents
agreed that ‘they’re okay, just need a bit of
improvement.
